Breweries that opened and closed in San Diego in 2025

It’s been a busy year for members of San Diego County’s craft-brewing industry. At the same time that brand-new breweries have emerged alongside satellite venues from existing companies, numerous beer businesses have closed their doors, succumbing to a tough economy and a challenging market. The following is a rundown of what has transpired over the past 12 months, including an engaging celebration of the local brewing community, as well as a look at what consumers are looking for in terms of beer styles and the hops they’re brewed with.

Openings, closings and movement

The past few years have seen the county’s brewing industry contract, with a significant number of beer companies – including some longtime establishments — going out of business. Key contributing factors to those operations’ failures include an inability to recover from pandemic-era debt, increased cost of goods, rising rent, utility and utility costs, escalating wages, and increased competition in the beverage sector matched with lower demand for beer and alcoholic beverages.

In 2024, 11 San Diego County brewing companies shuttered, nearly half of which had been open for a decade or longer. In 2025, a dozen local beer concerns closed their doors, but this crop of departing breweries was different. Of them, just four had been in operation for more than 10 years. Additionally, most were of the small or very small variety, with only two – Oceanside-based Black Plague Brewing and downtown San Diego’s Resident Brewing – having been widely distributed to bars, restaurants, grocery and liquor stores. Even Little Miss Brewing, a Logan Heights-based interest that operated more satellite taprooms than any other local beer company — 10 —  produced only around 3,500 barrels of beer annually, a relatively low amount.

But the takeaway here is not that small breweries are struggling. To the contrary, small operations with low headcounts and expenses, which focus primarily on the communities in which they are based are thriving, not just in San Diego, but throughout the country. It’s a model that’s proven far safer in these largely uncertain and challenging times for U.S. manufacturers, and one that resonates with modern-day drinkers looking to support their local everything.

Of the 10 brewing companies that have launched in 2024 and 2025, all but one adhere to the aforementioned model, brewing reasonable amounts of beer without a plan for broad distribution within or outside of the county. Many of those operations, including outlying brewpub Hill Street Brewing (the fourth craft-beer concept to make a go of it at a former REI in South Oceanside), exclusively sell their beer across their own bars, a practice that yields far greater profit margins than selling beer to retail accounts.

At the height of San Diego’s craft-beer heyday, most new operations were built to grow and grow fast, but today’s entrepreneurs are learning from those who came before them. As a result, they should stand a better chance of weathering the current climate, ultimately resulting in fewer countywide closings in years to come.

It’s important to note that not every closing is a net-negative for the local industry. In many cases, shuttered breweries, brewpubs and taprooms are taken over by beer companies looking to expand their reach or enter a promising neighborhood. There were nine such cases in 2025, with Anaheim-based Asylum Brewing converting Black Plague’s North Park taproom into its first San Diego venue, Modern Times Beer having installed its “Timestead” pub concept in the former site of Resident’s host business, The Local Eatery & Drinking Hole. Another Anaheim beer business, Villains Brewing, has made a home of the two-story domicile-turned-brewpub that formerly housed Half Door Brewing in the East Village, and earlier this month Kearny Mesa’s Hopnonymous Brewing opened its first satellite tasting room in what used to be Little Miss’ Normal Heights’ venue.

Meanwhile, talented brewers from companies that have gone out of business have caught on and made positive impacts at other breweries. Key among them are former Black Plague head brewer Aeryk Heeg, who is now lead brewer at Scripps Ranch-based Harland Brewing, former WestBrew head brewer Dustin Hendrick, who has moved on to Valley Center’s Rincon Reservation Road Brewery, and former GOAL. Brewing head brewer Derek Gallanosa, who is now in charge of fermentation for Chula Vista Brewery.

Beer Week bounces back

Launched in 2009, San Diego Beer Week was imagined as an annual 10-day free-for-all celebration of local beer and breweries in a variety of creative ways during the first full week of November. And that is exactly what it became, with brewing companies holding next-level events at their taprooms, as well as bars, restaurants, hotels, museums, art galleries, music venues and more.

About a decade in, Beer Week began to wane, with fewer events, many of which were similar to one another. Then came COVID-19, which made it altogether impossible to hold public events. Once government distancing mandates were lifted, Beer Week returned, but brewery participation, fan engagement and event attendance were significantly down, even at its premiere event, a large-scale beer festival called Guild Fest. Presented by the San Diego Brewers Guild, a non-profit trade organization representing the county’s brewing concerns, it had long been most brewing professionals’ and beer fans’ favorite event, garnering large numbers and helping fund Guild initiatives all year long.

In 2023, Guild Fest was discontinued, then replaced in 2024 by a new, similar event called the Capital of Craft Beer Festival. Brewers showed up, but attendance was a sliver of its predecessor’s averages. Frustrated but not deterred, this year the Guild teamed with a pair of local event specialists, who moved the festival to the Harley Davidson Event Center in Bay Ho, added live entertainment and increased promotional efforts. The result was the best event of its kind since before the pandemic, and something that left local brewers feeling greatly encouraged for future years.

That hopeful spirit was further buoyed by the resurrection of an event called The Battle of the Guilds, an annual Beer Week affair in which brewers’ guilds from across California send their (often hard-to-come-by) beers to a host venue, where attendees of the event then taste them and cast votes on which region has the best overall beer of the evening. Formerly held at North Park Toronado, this year’s revived battle took place at Barrio Logan’s Tiny Giant Taproom. The turnout for the event was substantial, something that could be said for many Beer Week events, ranging from AleSmith Brewing’s longtime standout Speedway Grand Prix event to programming-packed 10-day spans at venerable spots like O’Brien’s Pub in Kearny Mesa and newcomers, including South Park beer-bastion Bock.

Hops still rule

As it has been for well over a decade, the India pale ale remains the best-selling style of craft beer in the country. This is especially true in San Diego, where the modern interpretation of the style has its origins. But whereas allegiances have largely been split between the classic West Coast IPA and its hazy, New England-born counterpart, it would appear the former is now the undisputed mayor of the capital of craft.

For the better part of the past decade, hazy IPAs, which have softer textures and less bitterness than West Coast IPAs, not only challenged their forerunners for supremacy but managed to usurp fan-favorite status altogether. But over time, nostalgia and a thirst for bolder flavors have moved the needle back to a western-pointing direction. There is still much – almost equal – love for both substyles, but the region’s original is once more first chair. Similarly, local consumers’ interest in other IPA variants, such as fruited, milkshake, and cold IPAs, has also declined significantly.

As for the hops lending flavor and aroma to those IPAs, the list of top varietals is currently headed by Mosaic, Strata and Citra. As the name implies, the latter imparts citrus to beers, while Mosaic is big on pineapple and tangerine flavors, and Strata lends tropical-fruit and interesting red-berry notes. Other longtime favorites include Simcoe (pine, red currant) and Nelson Sauvin (white wine, petrol), which have more recently been joined by newer arrivals like Krush (orange, mango) and Nectaron (nectarine). It’s a far cry from when hops mostly tasted of pine, resin, orange and cannabis, and a sign of how much palates have advanced over the past three decades and the evolution of hops, IPAs, and beer, in general.

Openings and closings

2025 new brewery openings: Good Pressure Brewing (Allied Gardens), Hill Street Brewing (Oceanside), Koobrew (Miramar), Lyons Peak Brewing (Jamul), Michi Brew Co. (San Marcos)

2025 Brewery-owned venue openings: Asylum Brewing (North Park), Brewjería Taproom & Kitchen (Chula Vista), Embolden Beer Co. – The Ramen Station (Kearny Mesa), Embolden Beer Co. – Rising Sun Collective (North Park), Hopnonymous Brewing (Normal Heights), Latitude 33 Brewing — SkyDeck (Carmel Valley), The Lost Abbey Brewing (Vista), Mason Ale Works (Barrio Logan), Mission Brewing (Miramar), Modern Times – Timestead (Downtown), Villains Brewing (East Village)

2025 brewery closures (asterisk indicates company open for 10 years or more): Ataraxia Aleworks (Kearny Mesa), Black Plague Brewing (Oceanside), Division 23 Brewing * (Miramar), El Cid Brewing (North Park), Five Suits Brewing (Vista), GOAL. Brewing (North Park), Half Door Brewing * (East Village), Little Miss Brewing * (Logan Heights), Northern Pine Brewing (Oceanside), Oceanside Brewing * (Oceanside), Resident Brewing (Downtown), Three Frogs Beer Co. (Santee)

Brandon Hernández is founder of San Diego Beer News (www.sandiegobeer.news), a site providing daily coverage of the county’s brewing industry, a beat he’s covered for almsot two decades. Follow him @sdbeernews or contact him at: brandon@sandiegobeer.news